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Our 2024 Climate on the Ballot newsletter highlighted the role of climate change on nearly every election issue, from the border to inflation to women’s rights. This year, we’ll analyze how those elected leaders are impacting global climate action, and the economic and societal power dynamics at play. How does power impede and propel progress? How do movements for progress build and use power? Vea la versión en español de Poder y Progreso.
The Injustice of Trump’s Climate Policy
In the chaos of the past three weeks, journalists have been scrambling to keep up. As Ezra Klein noted in a New York Times op-ed that made the rounds, “[F]ocus is the fundamental substance of democracy… The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point.”
It’s a particular problem for climate reporters, who are being forced to cover Trump’s gutting of climate policy even as their own ranks are shrinking. In addition to leaving the Paris Agreement, rescinding $4 billion in US pledges to the UN climate fund, appointing numerous chemical and oil industry alumni to the Environmental Protection Agency, and ordering a review of hundreds of regulations across agencies, those now in charge at the EPA, Department of Energy, and a dozen other agencies, as well as the Army Corp of Engineers, are working to expunge any programs related to Justice 40, the Biden administration’s signature environmental justice initiative.
Black and brown communities in the US suffer disproportionate harm from pollution and climate change, and Justice 40, launched in January of 2021 by a Biden executive order, aimed to address those disparities with funding and programs aimed at delivering cleaner water, cleaner air, low cost clean energy, and climate resilience projects to disadvantaged communities. It was the “single largest investment in environmental justice going directly to communities in history,” according to the EPA.
THE POWER
Since January 20, the Trump administration has moved swiftly to cut all programs throughout the federal government that mention the words diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Employees at the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice were told in a phone call that some of them could shortly be placed on administrative leave, reported Coral Davenport for The New York Times. “The move was seen as the first step in President Trump’s widely expected plan to do away with the office.” Politico reported that “168 employees who worked on addressing pollution facing communities of color and low-income and rural areas,” were put on administrative leave.
The EPA sent out an internal memo, obtained by Politico, that instructed agency officials to allow payments that had been frozen since January 20 to some, but not all, programs funded under the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act.
Despite orders from two federal judges ordering the government to unfreeze all funds, the EPA continued to withhold payments from a number of IRA programs. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the senior Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, told Politico, “It’s hard to tell what is incompetence and what is confusion and what is basically contemptuous trickery. But it does seem that they say one thing, and then the funds don’t move.”
Over at the Department of Energy, Heatmap News’s Jael Holzman reports that “[d]ays after Trump took office, acting Energy Secretary Ingrid Kolb reportedly told DOE in a memo to suspend any work ‘requiring, using, or enforcing Community Benefit Plans, and requiring, using, or enforcing Justice40 requirements, conditions, or principles’ in any loan or loan guarantee, any grant, any cost-sharing agreement or any ‘contracts, contract awards, or any other source of financial assistance.’” She cites reporting from E&E News’ Hannah Northey that the directive applied to all “existing” contracts.
Several Democratic lawmakers staged a protest outside the EPA, hoping to bring attention to the continuing funding freeze. It is still unclear whether contracts will be honored or the funding will be disbursed.
THE PROGRESS
Biden’s Justice 40 EO, rescinded by Trump, “required agencies to direct 40 percent of the ‘benefits’ of federal climate programs to ‘disadvantaged communities.’” The World Resources Institute reports that “$600 billion has been designated for more than 500 programs across 19 federal agencies.”
The programs, which run the gamut from Solar for All ($7 billion to create new or expanded low-income solar programs) to improved public transportation to training and workforce development to reducing and remediating legacy pollution, included a provision for local groups and leaders to participate in the planning and implementation of projects to ensure that the benefits reached the intended communities.
Activists say they will fight to save the programs. “We have known the hope of promises made, the joy of promises kept, and the bitterness of promises broken,” Beverly Wright, the founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, one of the oldest Black environmental groups in the nation, told Capital B News. “Our commitment is unwavering.”
“The lawyers are ready,” Robert Bullard, founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University told Inside Climate News. “We’ve got to fight to make sure we don’t roll over and let things happen to us, but be ready and prepared to fight back.”
Story Ideas
- Explain the basics. Help audiences understand what Justice 40 aimed to do and the problem it was trying to solve. Be specific about the program’s name and purpose instead of labeling it “DEI.”
- Follow the Money. “Some environmental nonprofits and researchers still don’t have access to their federal grants after the Trump administration ordered them halted on Jan. 27,” reported Bloomberg Green on February 4. Contact grantees in your area and report on their funding status.
- Solar For All grantees ($7 billion)
- Clean School Bus grantees ($5 billion)
- Climate Pollution Reduction grantees ($4.3 billion)
- Community Change grantees (nearly $2 billion) (PDF)
- Inflation Reduction Act Tracker, which records actions taken by federal agencies to implement, or roll back implementation of, the IRA’s climate-related provisions
- Report on Justice 40 programs, the inequities they were working to address, the progress they’ve made serving underserved communities in their work, and what will be lost if they are forced to shut down. Some local story examples:
- “Trump’s funding pause clouds future of Solar For All Program,” Terry L. Jones, Louisiana Illuminator, Feb. 5
- “Federally funded climate projects in Mass. face uncertainty under Trump,” Barbara Moran and Miriam Wasser, WBUR, Feb. 3
- “How the Money Stopped at One Environmental Nonprofit, Causing Hardship and Alarm,” Lisa Sorg, Inside Climate News, Feb. 6
- “How Black Communities Are Leading the Fight Against Climate Change,” Adam Mahoney, Capital B News, Dec. 18
- Interview environmental justice advocates and legal experts about how they are planning to respond to the Trump administration’s attempts to defund and shut down Justice 40 programs. “There are groups that are positioning to make sure that communities can keep the funds that were obligated to them,” Jalonne White-Newsome, who led the first ever office on environmental justice in the White House, told 19th News.
- Interview EPA workers who were laid off or placed on administrative leave about the work they were doing and what it will mean for the communities if the work stops.
- “‘We Feel Terrorized’: What EPA Employees Say About the Decision to Stay or Go Under Trump,” Sharon Lerner and Pratheek Rebala, Propublica, Feb. 6
MAPPING PROGRESS
The day after Trump took office, the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool went offline. State and local officials used the mapping tool to identify environmentally disadvantaged communities. But thanks to a coalition of data scientists, a functional (unofficial) copy went live on an independent website two days later.
“The dashboard consolidates hundreds of data points to establish a community’s level of economic and environmental risk, taking into account metrics like income, asthma prevalence, flood hazards, air pollution exposure and proximity to wastewater,” reports Inside Climate News.
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